Melodic, beat-driven electronica from a shed in the UK

Yearly Archives: 2008

Well, I’m pleased to say, the surgery was a success and the DR-110 finally has some kick drum oomph. Lot’s of it actually.

I’ve made quite a few modifications and added a bunch of knobs; there is a Snare Decay, then a Snare fizz/snap mix – lot’s of sound adjustment potential with these two. On the next row we have clap and hi-hat pitch. All four modifications replaced the existing fixed resistors with 47k pots as per the suggestions here

Then a row of switches to increase the clap and snare decay envelopes, making them sound distant and echoey. This was acheived by piggy-backing 2.2uf electro capacitors in series with the original capacitors. I got the idea from this post, but rather than make permanent modifications, I wired them to switches so that I could retain the original sounds too.

And finally, two more switches for Thud 1 and Thud 2 respectively. The first switch puts a 4.7uf electro capacitor across r70, which gives a subtle boost to the kick. The second switch adds a further two parallel 4.7uf capacitors across r70 that gives it a nice 808 like roundness.

I’ll put some before and after loops up in the next couple of days so you can hear the effect for yourself.

Definitely worth buying one of these if you see one for a reasonable price.

Inspired by the video on George Lazenbleep’s excellent haha-fresh website I recently bought a Boss DR-110 drum machine on ebay. It’s the last analogue machine Roland made, and it arrived today!

First impressions are that it’s got some cool 606/808 type sounds but that kick drum is far too wimpy to be of any real use. Fortunately, the net is rife with various weird and wonderful modifications including one which adds some much needed boost to the kick drum.

One of the best things about getting older is that you are no longer under any pressure to be cool. Whereas a few years ago, everything had to be abstract, moody and minor keys, I’m now a Dad of two with a mortgage and a rediscovered love of 80’s synth pop. How things change.

Wonderful things can happen when you ignore your inner critic and my most recent remix is the perfect example of this. My younger self would have thought it far commercial and ‘pop’ but my older self knows better. Anyway, onto the remix….

The band Love Spirals very kindly made the individual parts of their song ‘This Truth’ available for a competition on Synthvox. As per usual, I waited until the last day of the contest to start my remix – nothing focuses the mind better than a bit of pressure. Whilst the original version was a sultry, downtempo affair I sprinkled some Scarkord fairy dust on it and turned it into something else entirely.

Before Christmas, I started working on an (extremely) glitched reworking of Vampires by Clear Air Turbulence. I didn’t have access to the individual parts on this one, so decided to dice and slice the original into bite sized pieces, before sending them off to play with dblue’s glitch and Audio Damage’s replicant – I love those plugins.

I’m sure when Cosmo hears what I’ve done to his track he will want to return the favour. All I can say is “Come and have a glitch if you think you’re hard enough”!

I’ve just remixed the Electric Chariot track “You’re Not Alone” for an AcidPlanet competition. The original version is an ‘electro house’ affair, but I’ve tried to create something altogther more moody and emotive with only the vocal parts surviving from the original track.

The mallet type delayed arpeggio, that reminds me somewhat of my idols Plaid, came from the rather splendid FM8 softsynth which also supplied the bass drone and synth pads. The drums were programmed and chopped in Acid Pro, with individual hits being effected by a variety of plugins including dblue glitch, audiodamage dr. device and scarkord distorto. (Got to get a mention in there somehow 🙂

The vocals themselves were subjected to some reverse reverb and dubstation delay with speakerphone supplying that ‘telephone voice’ effect. Oh and plenty of chopping up too 🙂